Case Study: Knowledge Portal at Cisco
By John Schneble
Cisco wanted to rapidly grow their new Service and Support Advocacy group, from 20 to 120 people. To accomplish that goal, Cisco needed a way to capture and share the expertise of its more experienced service and support managers. Because this was a new group, training and ongoing support resources were limited. Although Cisco’s corporate intranet contained a portion of the needed resources, the time and effort required by new hires to locate them was costly. Here's how Cisco and their partner VisionCor designed, developed, and deployed a knowledge portal that provides service and support managers with a single source for learning, performance support, and ongoing knowledge sharing needs.
As the leading supplier of high-performance internetworking products, Cisco provides most of the infrastructure for the Internet. With more than 40,000 employees and record growth, the need for quick and easy access to information is vital to Cisco’s ongoing success.
To manage costs and practice what they preach, Cisco runs a significant amount of internal operations on its corporate intranet, which is critical to customer support. Indeed, exemplary customer service ranks high in the minds of Cisco employees—starting at the top. Each night, Cisco CEO John Chambers spends nearly 40 percent of his time listening to customers and personally reviewing all key accounts. In addition, Cisco created the service and support manager (SSM) role to provide a single point-of-contact for large clients. This one-to-one relationship gives customers a resource that understands and even anticipates their needs—a role that benefits both Cisco and the customer.
The business objective
With the goal of hiring 250 service and support managers in a period of 18 months, Cisco needed a comprehensive knowledge management solution that provided new SSMs with immediate access to crucial resources as well as orientation and reference information. Fast access to this information would help reduce the time to proficiency in Cisco's fast-paced work environment. Cisco also needed to leverage the expertise of its experienced SSMs by capturing and sharing their knowledge. Vital to SSMs' success was user-friendly access to all of this information. The three key objectives of the new initiative were
- minimize time-to-proficiency. Orient new SSMs within 90 days of hire date by providing just enough of the right information about Cisco, its customer advocacy organization, and the SSM role in order for SSMs to become productive as soon as possible.
- maximize performance and sharing of knowledge assets. Provide information specific to the SSM role, such as best practices of how other SSMs handled certain customer situations, goal setting, and advice on when and how to engage other departments within Cisco.
- foster ongoing learning and communication. Within Cisco’s geographically dispersed work environment, develop a communication vehicle for sharing information and experiences with other team members.
The solution
Because Cisco is an Internet-centered company, a Web-based resource was essential. Rather than build the resource itself, the company looked to a partner to speed the development process. Senior manager Todd Griffin wanted a partner with experience researching, analyzing, and organizing complex environments. "There are plenty of Internet consulting firms out there, but we needed a partner with real knowledge management expertise and a proven methodology," says Griffin.
Enter VisionCor's Integrated Knowledge Architecture (IKA), which is an object-oriented approach to organizing content based on how the content is used. IKA provides a guide for organizing information, learning, and knowledge into smaller pieces called knowledge objects and building meaningful relationships between those objects. As a result, the end-user can locate the critical information needed to improve productivity and performance more quickly and easily. IKA is technology-neutral and can be used to leverage the capabilities of most major portal or knowledge management platforms. According to Griffin, "VisionCor understands how to determine what information to gather or build and how to organize the information so it's useful."
To build Cisco's solution, VisionCor assigned a team of consultants that included expert content developers, information architects, and a project manager. The project plan was developed based on VisionCor's development methodology in conjunction with its IKA methodology. The high-level steps were
- define the site's purpose
- define the site's content
- classify and organize the content
- identify and develop knowledge objects
- define the site's organizational and navigational schemes
- create a site maintenance plan
- create and rapidly deploy a prototype
- validate the site design by conducting a usability test
- make necessary changes based on the usability test
- continue to maintain, cultivate, and migrate knowledge
- conduct periodic value-add measurements to ensure continued effectiveness.
Status reports, project schedules, and conference calls kept the VisionCor team in Charlotte in synch with the Cisco teams in Chicago, New York, San Jose, California, and Research Triangle Park, North Carolina. After a complete project and role analysis, the project was divided into four distinct phases.
Phase 1: Quick hits. With new hires already in place and looking for direction, there was an immediate need for a 90-day new hire roadmap. Because the initial portal would be text-based, including rich detail and context was vital. Through interviews with existing SSMs and managers, the VisionCor team gathered, analyzed, and organized the events and tasks required for a new SSM.
The project sponsor and business leads helped select the best people to interview. A mix of new hires and experienced SSMs were consulted to determine the most useful and valuable information to include. However, any SSM who would use the portal was welcome to participate. To minimize the burden on people to contribute to the knowledge portal, interviewers maintained a reporter-type position to solicit content and ensure consistent writing and formatting, which varied based on the content type.
Within 45 days, the most important new hire information was made available on a text-based Website.
Phase 2: Initial development. Because the SSM role was a new and highly strategic one within Cisco, the VisionCor team conducted additional interviews to help build consensus within the company on some of the aspects of the SSM role. With a consensus in place, VisionCor built an overall site map and detailed content plan. The site look and feel was designed around content, audience analysis, and the existing intranet. Information was then converted into a Web format.
Once the site navigation, graphics, and initial content were developed, VisionCor conducted usability tests to ensure that the site structure was intuitive and content was meaningful. Experienced SSMs tested specific scenarios to ensure maximized usability. Testers varied from new hires to experts and leaders. Usability tests also helped to determine what content should be linked to other content to help maximize the content's value.
The entire development process took approximately 90 days from start to finish.
Phase 3: Core development. With the initial content online and tested, development and coding of final site content began. To confirm that the team was still on target, VisionCor conducted additional analysis on the SSM role and reviewed content categorization. The remaining content needed for a full-service portal was gathered, developed, and coded, with additional interviews conducted as necessary.
Next, developers began integrating content so that navigation was intuitive, which required a thorough understanding of the audience and how they would use the portal. To do that, VisionCor employed its own methodology for organizing content into knowledge objects and building relationships between them. Structuring content as objects based on how the information will be used gives developers an intuitive guide for building relationships and links between individual objects, what VisionCor calls chains of inquiry.
Next, the knowledge portal was retested. Users were given varied scenarios or situations and asked to use the Website to find the information they needed to best respond the situation. Developers conducted analysis based on how SSMs used--and didn't use--the portal. In addition to providing feedback, the usability tests also assisted in user acceptance of the site, which is vital to the success of any knowledge management initiative.
The team completed development and testing of the finished knowledge portal in approximately 120 days.
Phase 4: Ongoing knowledge cultivation. Because the portal is a growing collection of knowledge and experience, ongoing development continues through periodic reviews and additions to the Website.
It's important to note that although the project timeline was sectioned into four distinct phases, new content and iterations of the site's design were migrated weekly.
The results
Cisco's service and support advocacy intranet site was very well received within the SSM organization. "Everything I need is in one place. I can find what I need when I need it without having to wait on an email reply, walk around looking for someone, or search through gigabytes of information on the intranet. Plus, after working through difficult situations, I can post my lessons learned on the site so my colleagues can learn from my experiences," says Mike Pusich, SSM for Boeing. Rob Dacey, SSM for GM adds, "It guided me through my first 90 days, helped me build a support team,and introduced me to other SSMs. Now I'm using it to define my objectives. Basically, this site just makes my job easier and gives me more time to focus on serving my customer."
Currently, Cisco is working with VisionCor to leverage the knowledge and benefits gained from the SSM project into other areas of their organization. Cisco's record-breaking growth and razor-sharp focus on customer satisfaction could be problematic, but VisionCor’s knowledge management expertise coupled with Cisco’s commitment to customer satisfaction turned Cisco’s information overload into knowledge-on-demand.
Published: May 2002